Sticks and Stones
by Krissy Mae Anderson
Summary: Sticks and stones might break your bones, but words can shatter a family. Written for sga flashfic Abandonment challenge.


_"Sticks and Stones" by Krissy Mae Anderson_

**Summary:** Sticks and stones might break your bones, but words can shatter a family.  
**Rating:** T / Angry Green Wombat  
**Category:** Pre-Series  
**Challenge: **_sga flashfic_ Abandonment challenge  
**Spoilers:** maybe "Letters from Pegasus", but not directly.  
**Disclaimer: **SGA is not mine, and everyone you don't recognize from the series is a product of my sick mind.  
**Beta & Encouragement:** _neth dugan_ and _darkmoon711_. Thanks, guys!  
**A/N:** This is sort of a prequel to my first SGA fic, "The Prodigal Son", and grew out of a little scene in there. Thus it's kinda AU-ish and based on my ideas about what John's family could have been like.

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Ameena Sheppard has been gone for three weeks now, but the house remains spotless, just as she left it the evening when she went out and never returned. It feels like no one lives at 1019 Orion St anymore, and an outsider would never guess that there are three teenage boys living there. Jeremy Sheppard spends all of his free time cleaning the house, because if everything stays in place he won't think about the great big void in his life that his dear Amy's death has left. The four surviving Sheppards have barely talked since the funeral - Johnny, Mike and Pete are like ghosts, hurrying out of the house in the morning and returning as late as they can. The kids have returned to school, and are busy with homework and tests and other important things - Mike's just finishing up junior high, and Johnny's going to college in the fall. Jeremy goes to his office at the base and spends days sitting at his desk, listening to condolences with his face frozen into a mask. 

Amy seems to follow him around everywhere, smiling from the framed picture on his desk, winking at him from the family photo on the living room wall, laughing on the answering machine message, determined to remind him just how much her absence defines his life. Sometimes, Jeremy finds himself hating her for abandoning him like this - being there one moment and dead the next, but then his common sense kicks in and he remembers that he should loathe the drunk asshole who plowed his car into Amy's on that fateful evening. He wishes he could resurrect that guy and beat him to death, but the man remains dead and blissfully unaware that he has fractured four lives with his fatal stupidity. Jeremy hears Pete and Mike crying in their rooms but he doesn't know how to comfort them, because he even reconcile himself with Amy's death, and he cries silently when he lies in bed at night.

Johnny is the only one who doesn't cry. He drives Mike to Boy Scout meetings and Pete to Little League games, juggles football practice, AP exams and various high school clubs, and stays up nights studying for the finals. Jeremy wonders how Johnny does it - what's the secret to not falling apart, and secretly hates his son for remaining calm. Ever since the phone call that turned a usually happy home into a desert, he can't stand to look at Johnny because he looks too much like Amy, can't look into the calm hazel eyes, and wonders how he had never thought so much about the resemblance. And now that he does, he thinks that John was the one son who was more hers then his - she allowed that boy anything; bought him a car, let him color his hair so he would look like a degenerate, always satisfied his whims. Jeremy cringes when he sees Johnny passing by in the hall, because the bright blue dye in his son's hair is too bright for the darkness that is consuming him.

Today the seniors have a half-day, and when Jeremy gets back from the base, Johnny's car is already in the driveway. Jeremy parks and goes towards the house, thinking that the living room needs to be dusted again, and wonders offhand where everyone has been eating for the last couple of weeks, because he can't remember cooking anything and he wouldn't let anyone eat at the dining room table. He goes inside the house, adjusts the rug and lines up the shoes and after putting down his briefcase and taking off his uniform jacket he goes to the kitchen, not sure what he is looking for there. The moment he steps inside he stops, jarred out of his daze by the dirty gym shoes in the middle of the kitchen. The tiles around them are splashed with mud, and for a moment it looks too much like blood on the windshield of his Amy's car, and before he knows it he's upstairs, throwing the door to John's room open, holding the shoes in his hand.

John jumps up when he hears his father charge in and bangs his elbow into a model airplane. Jeremy takes one look at the face and the eyes he has tried to ignore for so long and something inside of him snaps, ignoring the voice of reason that sounds scarily like Amy. He starts screaming, something he has never done before, and all his pain and grief of the last three weeks spills out, and John just watches him, an eyebrow slightly quirked and his mouth half-open, and that just makes Jeremy scream more. He wonders how it has come to this, that the only way he can deal with the death of his wife is to yell at his son, but he cannot stop now that the floodgates have opened, and Johnny is just too damned calm. When he finally runs out of steam and needs to stop for a breather Johnny's composure fractures a bit, and he looks hurt and confused.

Johnny begins to speak, calmly trying to find out what is wrong, but Jeremy doesn't want to listen, because he needs to splash out his anger at someone - and John is the only one who is accessible. He can't yell at Amy for being dead, can't yell at that drunken dumbass for drinking and driving and killing and not being there to be killed for his crime, can't yell and Pete or Mike because they are too young but John is here, and he's too much like Amy, and he's too calm, and why, doesn't he ever intend to cry for his mother and how dare he disturb the sacred cleanliness Amy has left behind. And finally, Johnny's calm façade cracks, and tears are spilling down his cheeks, leaving wet trails on his grimy face. His lips tremble slightly, and for a moment, Jeremy sees his son for what he really is - an exhausted, traumatized kid whose life has been turned upside down, and who has not been given time to grieve.

But then the red haze takes over again, and he remembers where Ameena was driving that night - to the high school, to pick Johnny up from football practice, because Johnny's car was getting fixed after it got rear-ended. And before he knows, he tells Johnny it's his fault that Amy is not longer with them, all his damn fault for getting his stupid ass into that accident so he had to be picked up that Thursday night, and then he throws the gym shoes at Johnny. That snaps his son out of the horrified daze he has withdrawn into, and he jumps up from the bed, and Jeremy suddenly understands that he has made a horrible mistake by repressing his grief for so long. And Johnny still doesn't scream, but his quiet words hurt worse then sticks and stones ever would have, and before Jeremy can think, the same words slip out as well – "I wish it had been you instead of her."

Jeremy doesn't remember getting back downstairs, but he does get there somehow, and pours himself a drink, and then another one, and drinks glass after glass of the good Christmas brandy as he wanders around the house and erases Johnny's existence from the family portraits and photo albums. When the bus drops Mike and Pete off and they come inside the house, they find their father drunk and silent, the house a mess, and their brother gone. Torn photographs litter the floor, John's clothes and schoolbooks are missing, along with his car, and for the first time, they can really feel that their mother is truly gone. The boys go upstairs and huddle together on their older brother's bed and cry quietly, their tears dripping on the comforter and leaving little puddles on the faces of the smiling suns that decorate it. The next morning, when they wake up, everything is back to normal, so to speak - the house is clean again, but it is no longer a tomb, and their father makes them breakfast and hugs them, but all three know that nothing will ever be normal again.


End file.
